BBC Two Airs Controversial 'Real Housewives Of ISIS' Sketch

Trending News: People Are Freaking Out Over The 'Real Housewives Of ISIS' Sketch

Long Story Short

Satirists produced a sketch about ISIS in the style of The Real Housewives that some find funny, others offensive.

Long Story

BBC Two, a British television channel, has aired a sketch that’s gotten viewers from the United Kingdom to the United States talking. The Real Housewives of ISIS portrays the comedic difficulties that four British Muslim women face after joining the terrorist organization in Syria, such as airstrikes interfering with explosive-belt and suicide-vest fashion shows.

“It’s only three days till the beheading, and I’ve got no idea what I’m going to wear,” declares Afsana, one of the characters. Yeah, it's like that.

Critics of the sketch, which parodies American media franchise The Real Housewives and its Australian, British, Canadian, French, and Greek spinoffs, contend that it ignores the challenges that women in ISIS’s caliphate face and mainstreams Islamophobia.

Some subject-matter experts have condemned what they view as leftist backlash inspired by political correctness, emphasizing the potential importance of comedy in combatting terrorists and denying them legitimacy.

“We think nothing when the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis are satirized, so why not ISIS?” asked Shiraz Maher, from the International Center for the Study of Radicalization. “ISIS wants to be taken seriously as an actor and state, they want approbation, and comedy denies them that, and takes away their shine.”

British Muslim comedian Shazia Mirza agrees. “Some people say that they are offended, some people are offended on others’ behalf, others are offended and they don’t even know why,” she told The Guardian. “Being offended is very popular these days.”

In light of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, when French extremists killed comedians for satirizing Muhammad, the debate over the relationship between information warfare, political correctness, propaganda, and taste has become more relevant than ever. No one can decide whether The Real Housewives of ISIS is effective, funny, or offensive. It may very well be all three.

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Drop This Fact

Kurdish militiawomen in Iraq and Syria have united to fight ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa.